Bangladeshi government unbans Facebook

In 2009, the government of Bangladesh started a project
called Digital
Bangladesh. Its premise was simple: that by 2021, Bangladesh (a third world
country slightly smaller than Iowa, where cricket, poverty, and heavy metal are
the national pastimes) would have countrywide 3G access (in 2021, mind you) and all universities
across the land would have internet, email, and licensed copies of Netscape
Navigator.

Unfortunately, soon after the Digital Bangladesh
declaration, someone uploaded top secret footage of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina meeting
army officers. The government's reaction was to block nationwide access to
YouTube. A few months down the line, the Bangladeshi government discovered that
the internet contained pornography, and they decided to take a stand. So they banned
84 porn sites and taught the world's erotic artists a lesson. This
is fact.

Most recently, the prime minister discovered that there are
satirical images of her on Facebook. So Facebook
was banned as well. Soon after the ban, there was a fire that killed
119 people. The government then decided to unban Facebook.

Jahangir Jackson Titu, the vice chairman of the Digital
Bangladesh Task Force, said: "We have decided to take this step so that the burn
victims who are still alive can post status updates with disappointed emoticons
such as ‘;-(' and let their friends and family know of the horrible injuries
and deaths that they have suffered. We are also putting together a task force
so that we can contact Facebook authorities and change the 'Relationship
status' of the 119 dead people to 'Single' since, being dead, they are
necessarily not married or in a relationship -- although, depending on their theological
beliefs, their situation could
described as 'It's complicated.' "

(Note: this quote is made up.)

Here is a hilarious banner that Bangladeshi ad agency Bitopi
Leo Burnett designed for Nando's Chicken. It deals with the upper middle class
Bangladeshi's frustration at not having access to the latest in Western
technology.

Arafat Kazi is
Bangladeshi but usually pretends to be a Ugandan ex-president.